708 – Copper coins are minted in Japan for the first time (Traditional Japanese date: August 10, 708).
1261 – Pope Urban IV succeeds Pope Alexander IV as the 182nd pope.
1315 – Battle of Montecatini: The army of the Republic of Pisa, commanded by Uguccione della Faggiuola, wins a decisive victory against the joint forces of the Kingdom of Naples and the Republic of Florence despite being outnumbered.
1350 – Battle of Winchelsea (or Les Espagnols sur Mer): The English naval fleet under King Edward III defeats a Castilian fleet of 40 ships.
1475 – The Treaty of Picquigny ends a brief war between the kingdoms of France and England.
1484 – Pope Innocent VIII succeeds Pope Sixtus IV.
1498 – Vasco da Gama decides to depart Calicut and return to Kingdom of Portugal.
1521 – The Ottoman Turks capture Nándorfehérvár (Belgrade).
1526 – Battle of Mohács: The Ottoman Turks led by Suleiman the Magnificent defeat and kill the last Jagiellonian king of Hungary and Bohemia.
1541 – The Ottoman Turks capture Buda, the capital of the Hungarian Kingdom.
1728 – The city of Nuuk in Greenland is founded as the fort of Godt-Haab by the royal governor Claus Paarss.
1756 – Frederick the Great attacks Saxony, beginning the Seven Years’ War in Europe.
1758 – The first American Indian reservation is established, at Indian Mills, New Jersey.
1778 – American Revolutionary War: British and American forces battle indecisively at the Battle of Rhode Island.
1786 – Shays’ Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, begins in response to high debt and tax burdens.
1807 – British troops under Sir Arthur Wellesley defeat a Danish militia outside Copenhagen in the Battle of Køge.
1825 – Kingdom of Portugal recognizes the Independence of Brazil.
1831 – Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction.
1842 – Treaty of Nanking signing ends the First Opium War.
1861 – American Civil War: United States Navy squadron captures forts at Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina.
1869 – The Mount Washington Cog Railway opens, making it the world’s first mountain-climbing rack railway.
1871 – Emperor Meiji orders the abolition of the han system and the establishment of prefectures as local centers of administration. (Traditional Japanese date: July 14, 1871).
1885 – Gottlieb Daimler patents the world’s first internal combustion motorcycle, the Reitwagen.
1895 – Rugby league is founded by 22 clubs at a meeting in the George Hotel, Huddersfield.
1898 – The Goodyear tire company is founded.
1903 – The Slava, the last of the five Borodino-class battleships, is launched.
1907 – The Quebec Bridge collapses during construction, killing 75 workers.
1910 – The Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910, also known as the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty, becomes effective, officially starting the period of Japanese rule in Korea.
1911 – Ishi, considered the last Native American to make contact with European Americans, emerges from the wilderness of northeastern California.
1914 – Start of the Battle of St. Quentin in which the French Fifth Army counter-attacked the invading Germans at Saint-Quentin, Aisne.
1915 – US Navy salvage divers raise F-4, the first U.S. submarine sunk in an accident.
1916 – The United States passes the Philippine Autonomy Act.
1918 – Bapaume taken by the New Zealand Division in the Hundred Days Offensive.
1930 – The last 36 remaining inhabitants of St Kilda are voluntarily evacuated to other parts of Scotland.
1941 – Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, is occupied by Nazi Germany following an occupation by the Soviet Union.
1943 – German-occupied Denmark scuttles most of its navy; Germany dissolves the Danish government.
1944 – Slovak National Uprising takes place as 60,000 Slovak troops turn against the Nazis.
1946 – USS Nevada is decommissioned.
1949 – Soviet atomic bomb project: The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.
1950 – Korean War: British troops arrive in Korea to bolster the US presence there.
1958 – United States Air Force Academy opens in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
1965 – The Gemini V spacecraft returns to Earth, landing in the Atlantic Ocean.
1966 – The Beatles perform their last concert before paying fans at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.
1966 – Leading Egyptian thinker Sayyid Qutb is executed for plotting the assassination of President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
1970 – Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War, East Los Angeles, California. Police riot kills three people, including journalist Rubén Salazar.
1982 – The synthetic chemical element Meitnerium, atomic number 109, is first synthesized at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany.
1991 – Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union suspends all activities of the Soviet Communist Party.
1991 – Libero Grassi, an Italian businessman from Palermo is killed by the Sicilian Mafia after taking a solitary stand against their extortion demands.
1996 – Vnukovo Airlines Flight 2801, a Tupolev Tu-154, crashes into a mountain on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen, killing all 141 aboard.
1997 – At least 98 villagers are killed by the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria GIA in the Rais massacre, Algeria.
2003 – Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the Shia Muslim leader in Iraq, is assassinated in a terrorist bombing, along with nearly 100 worshippers as they leave a mosque in Najaf.
2004 – Michael Schumacher wins his 5th consecutive Formula One Drivers’ championship (and 7th overall) at the 2004 Belgian Grand Prix by finishing second to Kimi Räikkönen to beat the 47-year-old record held by Juan Manuel Fangio.
2005 – Hurricane Katrina devastates much of the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, killing an estimated 1,836 people and causing over $108 billion in damage.
2007 – United States Air Force nuclear weapons incident: Six US cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads are flown without proper authorization from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base.
2012 – At least 26 Chinese miners are killed and 21 missing after a blast in the Xiaojiawan coal mine, located at Panzhihua, Sichuan Province.